Review of “The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Quanta and Fields” by Sean Carroll

I listen to Sean Carroll’s podcast, Mindscape, every week and he’s always referring to his series of popular science books. This is the second, which does a pretty good job of explaining all things quantum and how they’re applied to the physical world.

There is some math, but it helped me better understand the underlayment of our reality, what I call “subspace” (my phrase not his). The concept of EFFECTIVE FIELD THEORY (AKA quantum field theory) is a good example of the old adage, “what goes around comes around”: physicists are back to the ether concept, which was put to rest at the beginning of the twentieth century. Now, instead of one metaphysical field permeating space, we have an infinite number, which through their interactions create particles, atoms, molecules, and life.

There are a few tricky steps, but this book does a pretty good job getting the gist of our best theory of reality across to a reader who isn’t afraid of mathematics.

A few ideas weren’t explained sufficiently, probably because physicists take them for granted, so I had to resort to Wikipedia a few times. Of course, the probability of my remembering any of this is negligible, so I’ll keep this one on the bookshelf rather than donating it.

I recommend it but, if you aren’t familiar with classical (Newtonian) mechanics, I’d suggest watching these videos first.